FIRST ON FOX: Oklahoma GOP Senator James Lankford released the seventh volume of his "Federal Fumbles" series blasting needless government spending amid the federal government’s debt ceiling negotiations.

The report details numerous examples of what Lankford calls wasteful and uneccessary uses of taxpayer funds that shouldn't be priorities while the government racks up sky-high deficits.

Lankford hopped on the phone with Fox News Digital to talk about his seventh book highlighting government spending waste coming out of Washington.

The Oklahoma senator said the annual report "is a focus on where are we’re wasting American taxpayer dollars and where is the federal government overregulating so that they are literally fumbling the ball."

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"So our focus is not just wasteful spending, it's also activities from the federal government that they're doing things they should not do," Lankford said.

With the national debt at $31 trillion, Lankford told Fox News Digital that "right now, the Biden administration is saying, ‘Hey, we don't want to negotiate on the debt ceiling. Everything's fine. In fact, we want to increase spending.’"

"No one believes that the federal government is totally efficient. Let me bring you some examples of this," Lankford said. "And you tell me if this is what the federal government should do."

"So, we did a whole grant for helmet and seatbelt studies in Ghana. We did a Shakespeare on the border to do a grant to present a new cultural praxis in decolonization at the US-Mexico borderlands," Lankford said. "There was a study of colonial sounds in Mexico."

"We put in a $4 million wine walking trail in Napa Valley, California, with federal dollars," Lankford continued. "That is one of the wealthiest communities in the world. Why are the people of Oklahoma helping pay for a wine trail in Napa Valley, California? We put the new fire alarm system into the Metropolitan Opera, which I'm not sure why, again, the people of Oklahoma should be paying for the fire alarm system in the Metropolitan Opera in New York City."

Lankford said he looks at some of the spending projects and thinks, "okay, it's fine for somebody to do this study," but asked why the funding has to come from "the federal taxpayer."

"For instance, we did an award for a grant and study the secret language that butchers use in Paris, France, in the 13th century," Lankford said. "Okay, fine. If somebody wants to study butcher language in France in the 13th century, that's fine. Why am I paying for that study in the federal tax dollars?"

Lankford said that "sunshine" is the best way to trim the fat on needless government spending and that his report dropping amid debt ceiling negotiations was unplanned.

The Oklahoma senator said he believes we will see meaningful spending cuts through the debt ceiling negotiations but noted that one vote won’t solve everything.

"It's not going to solve everything. We're way out of balance," Lankford said. "There's no way you can have a vote that solves everything, but you can change the trajectory."

Lankford’s waste report highlights several different price tags the federal government has paid with names befitting the absurdity of the spending, including $20,600 for "Drag Shows in Ecuador," $1 million for a Washington, D.C. "dance equity organization" the Dance Institute of Washington, and $25,000 for a modern art exhibit centered around John Lennon's widow Yoko Ono in Springfield, Missouri.

The Yoko Ono exhibit will be entitled "Yoko Ono: Mend Piece" and will be featured at the Springfield Museum of Art in Missouri thanks to federal tax dollars.

"The Springfield Museum of Art describes the exhibit as a ‘simple white room,’ where ‘shattered cups and saucers are placed on a table,’" Lankford’s report reads in a section titled "Yoko Oh-No!" "‘Participants are asked to mend the fragments together using common household items: twine, glue, scissors, and tape. The resulting works are displayed on nearby shelves, evidence of the power of collective action.’"

Other "Top 10" federal receipts include the National Science Foundation spending $660,422 to "study the impact COVID had on Russian women," $11.3 million on the VA offering veterans abortions, and a $66,000 funding a book titled "Mexican Soundscapes of the Colonial Era."

For years, when the tiny Alaska Native village of Rampart's awful internet service would go down, the only way to reach the outside world was to await the small airplane that touched down daily with supplies and the occasional visitor.

"We had no way of getting ahold of anybody out of Rampart other than going to the airport and telling the pilot," said tribal administrator Margaret Moses. The pilot would relay messages — including word of medical emergencies — after flying 100 miles to Fairbanks.

The Koyukon Athabascan village of about 50 people eventually upgraded to a satellite company, at a hefty price of $3,000 a month.

It's one of scores of Alaska Native villages where spotty and expensive internet coverage is the norm — if it's available at all. And such service can be the only lifeline for remote communities, many of which can be reached only by boat or plane.

Now, efforts to address inequities in a longstanding digital divide are underway across the nation’s largest state by land area, particularly in Alaska Native villages, with funding provided by the 2021 infrastructure bill and other federal programs as part of the Biden administration’s Internet for All initiative.

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Overall, the bill provides $65 billion in funding to improve broadband access in the U.S. Every federally recognized tribe, including 229 in Alaska, can receive up to $500,000.

Jill Biden visited the southwest Alaska community of Bethel late Wednesday on a stopover to Japan to highlight progress being made under the program, including the award of $125 million last year for two broadband infrastructure projects in the area. In doing so, it was the the first visit by a first lady to Bethel, which is about 400 miles west of Anchorage and accessible only by air.

"With high-speed internet, you’ll have better access to critical health care, new educational tools, and remote job opportunities," the Anchorage Daily News reported Biden told a crowd at the local high school.

"It will change lives. It will save lives." said Biden, who was accompanied by Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, U.S. Rep. Mary Peltola, an Alaska Democrat, and Alaska first lady Rose Dunleavy.

Dunleavy said the broadband investments in the Bethel area will help create jobs. She told the crowd: "Rural Alaska has always been on the wrong side of the digital divide until today."

An additional $5 million in grants were awarded Wednesday, including $500,000 to the Hoonah Indian Association of southeast Alaska to help train people for jobs created by a tourism boom.

Nine other $500,000 grants were awarded to three tribes in California, helping increase the speed to 314 tribal households for the Soboba Band of Luiseno Indians; providing equipment and training to the Seminole Tribe of Florida; and upgrading 17 households with high speed internet service in the Match-E-Be-Nash-She-Wish Band of Pottawatomi Indians (Gun Lake) in Michigan.

Other grants went to tribes in Minnesota, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin.

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"What’s been hard in administering this program is the need is just so immense when you look at the totality of Indian Country as a whole and the lack of critical infrastructure that that hasn’t been made available previously to most of these communities," said Adam Geisler, a division chief with the administration’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration..

Three-quarters of the 574 federally recognized tribes in the U.S. applied for over $5.8 billion in funding when the Tribal Broadband Connectivity Program launched. However, the program is currently funded at just short of $3 billion, most if it from the infrastructure bill. So far, nearly $1.8 billion has been awarded to 157 tribal entities to improve broadband access.

In Alaska, 21 projects have received more than $386 million.

In the Yupik subsistence community of Akiak, 30 miles (48 kilometers) north of Bethel, tribal officials provided free broadband to the village's 100 homes during the COVID-19 pandemic until grant money was exhausted.

The Akiak Native Community tribe wanted to use its $500,000 to at least subsidize that service. However, its grant was assigned to its Alaska Native regional corporation, which will have an internet provider eventually bring fiber broadband to Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta villages.

That’s left subsistence residents in Akiak, where a quarter of all families fall below the poverty line, to either pay $90 a month for their own satellite service or wait for fiber.

Kevin Hamer is general manager of the Yukon Delta Tribal Broadband Consortium, a nonprofit tribal organization made up of 18 tribal governments in the Yukon Kuskokwim Delta area, including Akiak. He believes there should be flexibility in the government funding to provide immediate, affordable broadband while tribal communities wait for fiber broadband, which could take years.

Tribal communities often have expensive and terrible internet service unless they can afford to pay for their own satellite service, including shelling out $600 for the equipment. Without satellite service, there is no video classrooms for children, telehealth with medical professionals, or telecommuting.

"You are excluded from all the benefits of the digital economy," Hamer said.